2016 contenders off and running in the money race

Prospective 2016 candidates say they’ll wait until after this fall’s elections to decide their plans — but their allies are already building the foundations for campaigns and ramping up outreach to the super-rich donors who will be called on to fund them.

Political outfits associated with 10 top presidential prospects in each party raised at least $86 million last year for committees that could help launch or support campaigns the minute they announce, according to a POLITICO analysis of recently filed campaign reports and interviews with the prospects’ allies.

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Fundraising focus on Clinton hurts 2014

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is headed to Dallas this week for a reelection fundraiser with rich Texas Republicans at the mansion of billionaire real estate titan Harlan Crow. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas invited Foster Friess to be his guest at last week’s State of the Union. Rick Santorum met last month in the Northern Virginia offices of his political guru John Brabender with top advisers, several of whom are on the payroll of his political outfit Patriot Voices. And Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who recently started a nonprofit that can accept unlimited donations, last week met some of the right’s most prolific donors at a Koch brothers’ retreat in the California desert.

Many of the biggest Democratic donors and top campaign operatives are aligning behind Hillary Clinton. But that hasn’t stopped prospective rivals from assembling their campaign-style operations and working the circuit, including Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, who recently hired a top New York fundraiser to solicit big checks from Wall Street.

The early money is flowing into state and federal reelection campaign committees, leadership PACs, super PACs and nonprofit groups created to boost pet causes. These outfits spent more than $50 million last year paying consultants and staff, funding political travel, donating to allies and buying ads.

This new pre-exploratory phase is critical to launching a presidential bid in the Citizens United age. Prospective candidates need a stable of rich allies to bolster their efforts well before the campaign starts — and fend off attacks from opponents who also have wealthy friends who can destroy a candidacy before it even launches with a single mega-donor check.

“It takes an enormous amount of time and work,” said Paul Begala, a top strategist to Priorities USA, a super PAC and sister nonprofit group that recently pledged its allegiance to Hillary Clinton. Begala said readying a presidential campaign in the Citizens United age reminded him of an old saying, “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today. And this is 20 years ago. This is why we’re starting now.”

The 2016 Democratic presidential nomination is widely considered Hillary Clinton’s for the taking. The infrastructure that’s arisen around her — without either her involvement or any surefire indication that she is even going to run — dwarfs anything any other Democrat could possibly muster and is unique in the annals of modern campaign finance.

Clinton’s inner circle has been keeping close tabs on a network of groups that together form a sort of Hillary shadow campaign that combined to raise more than $12 million in 2013 to build a voter database and a grass-roots army, and later to air ads for a presumptive 2016 run.

On the second to last day of 2013, the billionaire currency trader George Soros — who had already given $25,000 to the Ready for Hillary super PAC that is spending big money building a voter file and grass-roots donor network for Clinton — stroked a $500,000 check to the American Bridge super PAC, which is defending Clinton against attacks from Republicans.

While Clinton has not been personally soliciting campaign dollars, all the members of Congress generating presidential buzz are actively raising smaller money into campaign committees and leadership PACs that, unlike super PACs, are beholden to federal contribution limits.

Sens. Cruz, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Marco Rubio of Florida, along with Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin are stretching the potential of such so-called hard-dollar fundraising through an innovative twist — joint committees that merge their various accounts and increase the maximum size of the donations they can accept to $10,000 a pop.

Rubio and Ryan, favorites of GOP establishment donors, raised $8 million and $4.8 million last year, respectively, through their various accounts. Both men spent heavily on digital operations, while Rubio spent $120,000 on ads defending the gun control stance of fellow GOP Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, whose opposition to expanded background checks had come under attack in ads funded by billionaire Michael Bloomberg. Ayotte, who is up for reelection in 2016, could be a key presidential endorser in her state’s first-in-the-nation primary.

Cruz, a favorite of the anti-establishment tea party, pulled in $4.1 million primarily from small donors, but he has worked of late to make inroads with deeper pockets who could subsidize a 2016 presidential run. He took as his guest to last week’s State of the Union the Wyoming investor Friess, whose $2 million in super PAC spending helped lift Santorum to a surprisingly strong showing in the 2012 GOP primary.

Asked by Fox Business Channel’s Neil Cavuto whether he was “jumping ship from Rick Santorum to Ted Cruz,” Friess laughed. “I am just so impressed with Ted Cruz,” he said, “but I am a Rick Santorum guy through and through.”

In addition to his super PAC largesse, Friess spent time on the trail with Santorum’s 2012 campaign, though it struggled to raise hard money, and still owes $512,000 to various vendors, including $383,000 to Brabender and $10,000 to a NASCAR team he paid to sponsor. In the run-up to 2016, Santorum is building a more robust operation through Patriot Voices, which last year raised $2.7 million into a federal PAC and a 501(c)(4) nonprofit — cash that went toward a political staff, travel and boosting candidates in key early states.

Yet it’s the sugar-daddy courtship that has been especially competitive on the GOP side of the ledger. Call it the Friess effect, wherein big checks are seen as a more efficient way to jump-start a campaign.

Supporters of Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who raised $5.6 million into a super PAC supporting his 2012 campaign for the GOP nomination, recently transferred $200,000 in leftover cash into a nonprofit expected to set the stage for another presidential campaign.